As per a recent news published in The Hindu Businessline, India would be needing 0.4 million project managers every year till 2020. This figure is as per the PMI India. The figures have evolved based on the advancement and development projections presented by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. Based on the volume and...

A project manager cannot afford to take a shortcut during any stage of his project. Shortcuts always mean compromise. And compromise in a project means a sure death sooner or later. There are various leadership qualities that a project manager needs to inculcate in himself so as to reach a stage where the chances of...

Software testing is as important during a project lifecycle as hard disciplined practice for a contestant preparing himself for a gold medal in Olympics. During this exhaustive practice, the player tries to overcome all his flaws and shortcomings. For this the player need to understand first the flaws and shortfalls, only then he can overcome...

A successful product development does not mean its deployment will also go successfully. Similarly a great project deployment team does not ensure a good quality product development. Both are entirely different and need a different attention. That is where the role of Quality Assurance comes into picture. Quality Assurance ensure a complete and universal handling...

A successful project closure doesn’t mean there will be stopgaps any further and all clouds of danger on the project are over. Project sign-off and project closure if happen on a successful note, are always welcomed by any project implementation team. Some activities that still need a lot of attention even after this stage is...

After completion of every project, as a project manager, you need to introspect to find out few answers. All projects might not end on a positive note. A project that travels its complete path without a single deviation to its timelines or financial guidelines can be termed as 100% successful. But it usually never happens...

At times it might not be visible in the beginning about the learning your team would be taking along by the end of the project. But depending on the rough tides encountered during the project lifecycle, it might turn out that each member is carrying a heap of learning from the project. One thing is...

When you are asked to lead a project it is very important for you to understand it to the root level and gain first hand experience. This might require a lot of discussions, interviews and brainstorming sessions with your own management, customer and internal team owners. Ensure that all such interactions add a substantial amount...

Software Testing is under the preview of Quality Control. The quality control team ascertains and ensures the software testing. There are many aspects of software testing and hence is possible to perform automated testing with the help of software testing tools. It is not possible to perform software testing in fully automated manner. There is...

No technology in project manager’s life can relieve him from efforts required in Quality Assurance. Quality Assurance is all about building quality processes that need to be adhered at relevant checkpoints. It is something like a check post after every few miles covered to ensure right passengers in the right vehicle adhering to all norms...

A recent and a very simple example to understand the issue – A laptop was to be delivered to a remote location customer. Repairing cost a few dollars and delivery cost to that location – double than the repair cost. The laptop was brought in the repair center. It was repaired by one of the...

Recently I attended an event where a stand-up comedian was invited as a gap filler after one of the interesting social media related interesting sessions. It is irrelevant to name that newcomer comedian who probably didn’t know about how to ensure not to cross that thin line gap between live comedy and cheap act. Just...

It is not difficult to deliver a product to your customer but meeting your customer’s expectations in terms of quality of the product and maintaining best of the services post delivery of a product is critical. That is where the core of the business lies. You will never be able to get a business again...

TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) is a not-for-profit institute in India engaged in research on energy, sustainable development and environment. TERI’s main focus is on finding out innovative ways of efficient and sustainable usage of natural resources. It is an independent institute that took birth in 1974 and since then it has consistently proved...

Project Management is a tricky job. The job of a project manager is like a car mechanic who adjusts the average by adjusting clutch, fuel discharge and brakes. All three have a different connection if we see in project management perspective. The clutch adjustment will lead to a better speed management, fuel flow related to...

Project management must have inbuilt sensors for detection of flaws (or shortfalls) in the system to monitor project progress quality. These sensors have to carry a fast response time and should be active in all kind of environments of the project management ecosystem. The sensors developed should not only be capable of project quality monitoring...

A project failure does not mean necessarily the failure of a project manager. It is the project management mechanism that needs to be hit to ascertain the basic flaws in the mechanism. There might be a wrong project methodology adopted to handle a particular kind of project and hence the chances of project failure increase...

Project Scope, project timelines and monitoring are the prime tasks of a project manager. If a team member fails to honor his or her individual tasks timelines, it is not the failure of that individual team member. It clearly indicates a lack on a monitoring process. The monitoring process has to be well crafted so...

As a project manager it is important for you to perform lot of conversions. First conversion that you do in your project management journey is customer requirement to project requirement. Similarly there are many conversions that happen during your project journey that we can list down as: Customer requirement to project requirement Project requirement to...

One of the question I asked, in an interview with Irum Zahra, an author from Pakistan, is based on managing her writing projects. I asked about her strategy formulations on planning, scheduling and monitoring her writing commitments, and her answer emphasized mainly on the fundamental realities of project management – project scope, milestones, work breakdown...